CM0 – A new Raspberry Pi you can't buy

Unfortunate name, as "CM0" is a common abbreviation for the ARM Cortex-M0 core.

Browsing the web on here is almost completely out of the question, since it only has 512 Megs of RAM

How far we have fallen... a quadcore 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM seems like ample computing power for those who have been very productive on PCs with far less.

Looks like you can buy one through the usual suspect - https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256810106029551.html

geerlingguy and simonw really amaze me at how well and consistently they cover their respective spaces of interest. Great content, easy to read, and thorough! I'm sure there are others doing deep reporting like this on their own subjects. I'd love to read them too.

So it could be possible to make a small portable screen device with this, or maybe not because (I think) the RPI is not optimized to work on a battery.

I would prefer a touchscreen with it.

I am not talking about a smartphone, because smartphones are often more powerful, more expensive. I would just prefer a device to do simple computing, with full access to the OS.

Smartphones tend to have android and powerful hardware, and a 4G or 5G antenna. I would just be happy with wifi and enough power to run some C or python code.

I am just curious what is the cheapest screen device that is possible to make with this, as long as it has wifi, a touch screen and be completely open. So far RPI is nice, but it's not really what I want.

I didn't know that castellated holes on a PCB were to facilitate SMT.

Sure makes it look like a stamp though… ;-)

"But unlike all the other Compute Modules, the CM0 has castellated edges like a Pico. That way, a company integrating this into their product can just pick and place it and solder it onto their main PCB, instead of working with more delicate board-to-board connectors."

But wasn't the board-to-board slide-in connection the whole point with other CM models?

I it would be great if some company put these into a small 7in tablet. Thats a very underserved form factor in the maker space.

I have ordered RP2040 chips on custom boards before from JLCPCB. Could you do the same for the compute mods?

Does anyone understand why RPi decided to make this China only?

In short, it's a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 designed to be embedded into a finished device.